Urban planning and civil engineering are the main actors of progress in civilization, starting from the ancient times until today. Since, civilization means modifying the nature and Geotechnical engineering is a branch of civil engineering concerned with engineering behavior of earth materials, it may also be defined as one of the major branches connecting and fitting «construction elements» to «Nature».
Geotechnology plays a key role in all civil engineering projects built on or in ground, and it is vital for the assessment of natural hazards such as earthquakes, liquefaction, sinkholes, rock falls and landslides according to “«EJGE», The Electronic Journal of Geotechnical Engineering defines Geotechnical Engineering”.
Nowadays, when the main aspect of engineering evolves to Computerized modeling and relying on results which are obtained from these complex software’s, role of Geotechnical Engineer is even greater to feel and understand the correctness of obtained results due to its engineering experience.
According to Prof. Dr. Heinz Brandl’s recommendations that he wrote back in 2004, in last decades level of geotechnics has increased regarding numerical methods. Young engineers think that everything can be calculated, even to an accuracy of several decimal places. A so-called "point-and-click generation" of "white collar engineers" without sufficient site experience is emerging. Nevertheless, engineering judgment will remain essential in the whole field of civil engineering, especially in geotechnics. But, engineering judgment can be gained only by combining theory and practice.
This paper describes the role of Geotechnical Engineering in some of the Urban Environment and Infrastructure construction projects and gives also examples why especially Geotechnical engineering cannot rely only on outcomes of numerical modelling without the touch of a Geotechnical expert.
As to remember, there is no agreement that nature will behave according to the forecasted mathematical formula. From this point on, each Geotechnical problem is unique, and solutions are “tailor made”.
